The only mishap I discovered that had occurred in our absence this weekend was cello-related. My D string had snapped.

This is incredibly frustrating for several reasons. These strings are brand-new, and I love the feel and the sound of them (even though the constant re-tuning is getting to me, as is the fact that I can’t use my fine-tuners; no, it’s stand up and crank that peg at the top of the neck, every twenty minutes); whenever anything new breaks, I feel a perfectly justifiable flare of anger. New stuff should be good for a few years. Of course, the temperature dropped to zero-ish celsius this weekend, and the heat went on for the first time this season; as these are gut strings and are peculiarly sensitive to temperature and humidity they reacted badly, and I ought to be thankful I didn’t lose more than one, I suppose.

No, it comes down to an even baser reason: I can’t afford to replace it at the moment. I kept my old strings as back-ups in case of disaster, so I’ll restring it today, but the balance will be off harmonically. (Old strings, new strings; mixing two sets… well, it’s a string player thing, I guess.)

Next week, then, I’ll be off to the luthier, and now I come back to the same old problem I had before, only slightly different: what brand do I get to replace it? I love the sound of the Eudoxas, but tuning constantly is wearing on me, and if they’re going to break that easily, I might want to try the Pirastro synthetic equivalent to the gut strings, the Obligatos. (For those who have misplaced the information I supplied a month or so ago: gut gives a warm, dark, mellow sound; synthetic cores are a gut alternative that produce a slightly more focused, brighter sound; and metal cores give the most brilliant projected sound you can get.) The Obligatos are comparable to my Eudoxas in price, they’ll be more stable, and they won’t need to be tuned so much. Knowing that my A string is the one that’s really touchy on my cello, I might stay with the gut A, since the sound is so lovely and mellow, and turn to the synthetics for the others as they need replacing. It might be worth it if I only have to tune one string constantly, even if it is the one with the peg that slips badly.

Why is my life fraught with such difficulty? I feel the need to go lie down again in the face of such a deep and consequence-laden decision…